


Harry Potter and the Hangman's Riddle

by Harpalyce



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: As is the way of all good and decent fanfiction writers., Auror Harry Potter, Gen, Harry Potter Could Use A Drink, Harry Potter could also use a cigarette and 12 hours of good sleep if you're offering, Harry Potter settles for coffee., I got very mad at the Cursed Child because of its terrible execution, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Relationships are listed but this is going to be a lot more like, So I have smacked JK until she got her mitts off the base concept and it is now mine., Voldemort's Children, also because JK Rowling did it so incredibly boringly, is now my concept and I aim to make it interesting! because screw boring time travel bs, is now starring in a cop procedural probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 06:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harpalyce/pseuds/Harpalyce
Summary: It was a pleasant day, really. Good breeze, not too hot. Just the sort of thing you'd want, for the French countryside. A shame Harry Potter was there investigating a murder.





	1. Lavender, Clove, Sweet Orange

 

Harry Potter sucked in a deep breath and immediately doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees, and tried hard to not retch.

Hermione had tried to explain it all to him, once. Something about large bodies of water occasionally acting as heat-sinks for magical energy, and some more affected by it than others. He could apparate Plymouth to Aberdeen and not even feel it, but a hop over the channel and he was reeling. Gritting his teeth, he reached up to pinch his nose.

Right… right. Focus. Focus… He squinted up at the blue sky, drank in another breath. Lavender farm nearby, he supposed. A quick run of his fingers through his short hair, and he had grounded himself well enough to stand up straight, adjust his collar, and shake it off. At least opting for sight-straightening spells over glasses these days meant he could rub his eyes to get rid of the last lingering queasiness still clinging to him.

Pleasant day, really. Good breeze, not too hot. Just the sort of thing you'd want, for the French countryside. A shame he was there investigating a murder.

There was already caution tape looping around the house's gate; muggle police cars and a crime scene unit, even if the personnel still ignorant of the magical world had been quietly replaced. The first forensic sweep had already been done - a comforting routine Harry was familiar with by now. One of the very few good things to come out of Voldemort's reign was that a near-entire turnover of the Ministry of Magic meant that it was the perfect time to introduce new ideas. Using muggle forensics as a solid bedrock, coupled with that approach to investigative technique, had been Hermione's idea in truth; Harry was just the convenient figurehead. In any case, seeing the workers shedding their disposable gloves at the door meant that he could give himself permission to reach into his trenchcoat and dig out his packet of cigarettes.

"Ah! Auror Potter, sir!" The young man barely restrained himself from tossing a salute - which was good, because Harry wasn't sure he could have kept himself from rolling his eyes.

"Afternoon, Davies." He had barely gotten his fingers around his lighter in his pocket before Davies eagerly offered out his wand, flame burning at the tip. That was Davies for you, Harry supposed - a bit of a tryhard, but heart in the right place. "Give me a rundown while I take a look around? They said this was urgent enough to come in immediately. Was going to look at the case file on the train over - one downside of apparating, no downtime for work."

"Yes, sir, of course!" Davies puffed out his chest a little at the responsibility. This time, Harry couldn't help but smile around his cigarette. Milk-faced and wide-eyed but perpetually enthusiastic nonetheless… well, someone had to be the naiive one, he supposed. It did make Harry wonder just when the new auror recruits looked so damned young. "So, the victim… one Février Durand. Female, age thirty-five, single." The yard was neat, but not overly clinical; garden full of perennials, not fussed over, but still planted with an eye that appreciated beauty. Rosebushes, but untrimmed. Yellow flowers. A windchime near the door, with a blue eye at the center - to ward off the evil eye. "She works in the nearby town of Mannevillette, as a ballet instructor. Has for the past fifteen years or so." A small house, a little disorganized, but comfortably lived-in. Takeout boxes in the trashcan despite the fresh produce from the backyard garden sitting on the counter. Calendar on the wall - no writing, just symbols, as if she expected someone to be reading over her shoulder and wanted to throw them off… "Already have been in contact with her boss. She had a history of… acting troubled, but lashing at herself, not others. Something of a hired charity case."

A line of pill bottles marched in polite single-file on the breakfast table and Harry immediately made a beeline to the small corner nook, picking up a bottle. "Ah, yes, I'm sure you've noticed by now -" Davies followed him quickly. "A long history of health problems. Was in and out of institutionalized care when a teenager but has been relatively stable for the past eighteen years. Still, quite a list of muggle medications…"

Harry chewed thoughtfully on his cigarette. "So, what's the diagnosis?"

"Uh…" Davies flipped through his small notebook. "Schizoaffective disorder. Paranoia and depression, it sounds like. But pretty well treated - we're still getting records from her local doctor. She's been able to function well in society, for the most part -"

"Bet her liver must be shot from all this, though," Harry muttered, half to himself, picking up one of the bottles and shaking it experimentally. Seven daily medications he could count, so far. "For the most part, you said?"

"Ah, yes. Her boss said that she occasionally had persistent paranoid delusions about being recognized. Only took masked parts in their ballet productions, for instance," Davies said, gesturing to the nearby wall. Photographs - lines of children in tutus, all beaming at the camera, their proud teacher behind them. But their teacher was always in a mask, the same wiry frame. A lot of productions of the Nutcracker… a lot of the Rat King presiding over many sugarplum fairies. "Did a lot of dying her hair different colors and so on."

"And now she's dead." Harry grunted. "Well. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." He motioned to Davies, waving a hand in a small circle as if telling him to keep on talking.

The floorboards creaked under his feet as he wound his way to the bedroom, past the plain hallway walls. "Right, right, where was I… yes. She didn't show up for work today - she's usually very punctual, obsessively so - so her boss stopped in on her lunch break…" As he came into the bedroom, it finally seemed to snap together in his mind. The house didn't have fifteen years of living - fifteen years of accumulation of knickknacks and clutter. Something was always held back, half-packed, as if waiting for something to happen so she could get out quickly… "Found Février hung in the bedroom, here, from the ceiling fan. Apparently died sometime during the night. Authorities were called, and the case was escalated to us, but not before the initial Muggle forensics were completed."

Harry paused to slowly exhale some smoke, dragon-like, as he looked up at the noose still hanging from the ceiling. "And they came to the conclusion it's a setup, right?"

Davies looked up from his notebook and gave a small startled noise. "Well - well, yes, sir, but how…"

"I don't think the ceiling fan would support her weight, not when she was struggling. Most people don't hang quietly. Their body remembers what it's like to fight, so they fight - spasm, jerk around, even in death. If she's teaching ballet, she's got to have at least a certain level of musculature; that's a lot of movement and stress. But someone setting up the noose and hanging her there when she's already dead, well, wouldn't consider that." He paused a second, looking out of the corner of his eye at Davies's wide-eyed, rapt expression. "Also because they already told me on the way over that this was a murder and not a suicide."

"…Oh." Davies exhaled, meekly buckling under the embarrassment. "Ah, um, yes. Well… the noose is intact - no fingerprints, I'm afraid, sir. But her body is there, on the gurney. A full autopsy will be done presently."

For half a second he considered not looking - after all, the woman had spent her entire life so scared of being seen, it seemed an insult to look at her in death. But sentimentality had very little to do with hunting murderers, so he stood by the gurney and ran his hand up the zipper of the body-bag to find the pull. "So, we're here because she was a person of interest in old Ministry files, right? Any indication why she was in there?"

The zippers on these things were always so noisy, he thought - a bit rude, in a way. "Ah, yes… Honestly, I'm not sure of the validity of it, sir. …She had been flagged in an old Ministry operation - 'Saint Patrick's Crusade' is the rather twee name they'd given it." A bit older looking than her true age, Harry thought. Her short hair was frizzy and bleached, but with black roots obviously coming in. Large eyes, doe-like even - at least someone had the decency to close them - small lips, worry lines… "It was, ah, an old operation to look for potential children of… You-Know-Who."

He was aware of how Davies braced himself, behind his shoulder, expecting Harry to recoil. Instead he didn't, reaching out to quietly brush a but of hair out of the dead woman's face. "We have that confirmed by Patersequax yet?" Same concept as muggle DNA testing, but quicker, and more reliable. An old medieval potion that Hermione had revived.

"Not as of yet, sir." Harry said nothing for a long moment. Strong cheekbones, natural black hair… They'd need confirmation, of course, but already his gut was telling him it was right. There was enough in her face that reminded him of the memory of Tom Riddle, sneering and proud in his prefect's uniform…

"Take some fingernail cuttings to get it confirmed, then, Davies." He zipped the body bag back up to look up around at the rest of the room. "Do we have it confirmed that she was a magic-user? …Never mind, I can see she isn't." He grimaced a little to himself, going over to the one corner of the room that was overgrown with items. Crystals, hamsa symbols with painted blue eyes in the center of the palm, even a dreamcatcher - protective runes, all sorts of desperate knicknacks… "Ah, Florida water." He picked up the bottle, tossing it lightly in his hands - half-full, and of fairly recent expiration date. "Haven't seen that in years."

"Florida… water, sir?" Davies wrinkled his nose in confusion.

"Bit of an island thing. Haven't seen it since we had that tangle in Brixton with the hoodoo set." He set it back down. "I'm going to guess we have no records of her ever casting a spell, or at least not intentionally. If she actually had any significant magical schooling, she would know that all of this is just… muggle trinkets and bunk, at least in the form she's got them in. You need a lot more than a shaker of salt and some hope to actually make a protective circle worth anything." Harry frowned, picking up a small silver disc. "And… a mirror? Not sure where just a plain mirror comes in, mind you, what sort of muggle tradition that's reflecting -"

"Sir…" Davies's voice was small and strangled. "A-ah - sir -"

Harry frowned. "What? …Don't tell me it's cursed and my face just broke out in pimples or something," he wryly joked, bringing the mirror up and looking into it. "Can't see anything yet, anyway, unless it's only on the back of my head. Unless it's cursed me with retroactively making me miss that patch when I was shaving this morning." He grimaced, running a hand along his chin.

"That's not a mirror, sir," Davies finally gasped out. "That's - that's a foe-glass."

* * *

It took five more cigarettes and an interview with two terrified-looking officials for the Ministry to finally accept that he was, indeed, telling the truth about never having stepped foot in Février Durand's house until that very afternoon. He was calm enough, but as the evening wore on, he could tell there was a distinct and bitter anger starting to burn in his chest.

Davies was the one to greet him as soon as he got back to his desk. "I'm so sorry, sir, about that, I mean -"

"It's all right, Davies. It's protocol. I'm not above protocol. I wrote it, remember?" The other man still looked half-terrified, and Harry sighed. "Listen, I'm not mad at you."

"You… aren't?"

"Nah. I am, however, mad at the son of a bitch that's out there using my face," he said, punctuating this by stubbing out his cigarette violently in his desk ashtray. It wasn't until it was fraying into cut tobacco that he let up. "Because it means that Ginny is going to have to start incinerating all our trash, again. Just when I thought it was maybe okay to go have my hair cut by somebody else for once. Guess it's just me and the number seven clip. Again."

He flashed Davies a somewhat apologetic smile, to show that he was, on some level, teasing. It was better, Harry knew, to not let them all know how very much he perpetually planned for the worst - how very much he was paranoid - mostly because that would make them recognize how often he was right.

"So. This is the 'Saint Patrick's Crusade' operation file, right?" Harry frowned lightly picking up the thin folder that had been left on his desk.

"Well… what remains of it," Davies admitted, still half-cringing. "It was scattered into several parts - most of which were found and destroyed. Probably by You-Know-Who -"

"Voldemort, Davies. He's dead. We say his name now."

"…V… Voldemort, by, ah, by his followers and those enthralled under his command. I'm not quite sure why, to be honest, but -"

"To keep us from knowing about it, Davies. …If the Order had known about any of his heirs, it would have been a potential bargaining chip. Not because of any sentimental value, I'm sure, but the dark magic of the sort Voldemort was keen to use - a lot of those spells run on blood and gore. And the blood and gore of a relative packs more of a punch than that of a stranger." Harry glanced over the top of the file as he browsed it. Davies had gone pale. "Sorry. …So this is the dregs left behind, huh?"

"Something like that, sir, yes. I'm afraid we only have these few papers because it was somebody's job to sit down and cast reparifarge and revealio on every single object in the entirety of the Ministry… it's just bits and pieces, maybe one name, I'm sorry it isn't more, sir -"

"A lead is a lead. I'm not averse to doing hard work, Davies." He reached into his pocket, pulling out his cigarette case and frowning. "Well. At least, I'm not when I actually have a proper stock of cigarettes. …I'll take these and look them over. Get on home, Davies. You've got a girlfriend, right?"

The other man stood a little straighter. "Ah - yes! I - I didn't really expect you to remember, sir -"

"Then you have the perfect excuse to get out of here and go have dinner with her, just like I'm going to see if I can get home with some Chinese before Ginny is back from practice. Have a good night, Davies."

"Of course, sir - thank you, sir! I'll, ah, I'll see you tomorrow…!"

He was the last one out of the department at that point - Davies turned off the lights as he went out, leaving only the pool of light on Harry's desk. His frustrated fingers pawed at his cigarette case a minute, tapping it against the edge of his desk as he looked at the scraps of paper in the folder.

It was strange to think of Voldemort having children. He knew better than to pretend that Voldemort was anything more than a donor of genetic material, making future resources for dark spells. That small house in the French countryside spoke well enough of that - a tiny slice of happiness that had been clawed out, tooth and nail, against disadvantages that she could have been saved from with a kind parent or even the pretense of one in her life. And for what? (The steady tap, tap, tap of his cigarette case against the table.) To just be left a corpse, with all those attempts at protection still there, uselessly, laying around her -

Best not to think about that, Harry.

Not tonight. Not now.

It could wait until tomorrow, he told himself, reaching out to turn off his desk lamp before he apparated away. It could wait until tomorrow...

 


	2. Last Weeks of Fructidor

"You know -" Ginny interrupted herself, giving her shower-wet hair another scrub with the towel. "There's another solution for this, but you're going to hate it," she called down the hallway to Harry as he set out their dinner.

"Yeah?" He pulled another of the take-out boxes from their plastic bag.

"...We could hire a house elf."

Harry said nothing for a moment, meditatively tapping the disposable chopsticks on the table. "You're right, I  _do_  hate it."

"I'm just saying, it would save work for us, and more importantly - even if Hermione's not in the magical relations department anymore, you know her name still has a bit of pull. Yours, too.  _Ours_  even." She talked as she fussed with her wet hair, but not bothering with fixing her oversized Holyhead Harpies shirt.

"Nope."

"It'd be a huge thing in the house elf community, if we hired one. You know that there's been resistance to that. We could show up, be seen, set the trend. If people suddenly start paying their house elves because they saw that we did, I mean, they're still getting paid?"

Harry said nothing. He merely looked up from the packets of soy sauce to nail her with a hangdog look that any basset hound would be proud of.

Defeated, Ginny flopped onto the couch. "Yeah, that's what I thought. ...And to be honest, I agree fully, but I still had to put it out there. What're we having?"

"Let's see…" Harry paused to fish a small pendulum out of his pocket. As he held it over the food, it swang to hover over each box. "Crispy duck, and there's the pancakes." The small scuffed plastic bottle that made up the pendulum held a small rock that began to bounce and softly glow. Its rattling made the metal chain shake. "Prawn chow mein. Some pork spring rolls, because I guess I'm not in the mood for vegetables. Oh, and there's some extra white rice. I dunno if you're carb-loading for practice or not." The pendulum hovered over the last box, and then swang to center, slack, and flashed green twice. Satisfied, Harry looped the pendulum back in his hand, then his pocket. "Oh, and some of those fried banana dumpling things."

"It's the sort of day deserving of fried sugar, yeah." Ginny leaned forward to reach for one of the bottles of cider Harry had set out before he jumped lightly, pulling out the pendulum again and waving her off - at least, until it had swung over each bottle, flashing green once more. She waited patiently. There would be other nights that she could gently push about how perhaps he didn't need to check the bottles when they first came in,  _and_  when they were about to be opened, for poisons or other tampering. But not tonight.

After all, it wasn't paranoia when they really  _were_  out to get you.

She cracked open the cider with a satisfying hiss, and a wave of her wand. "Are you sure you don't want me to get you a new Gorochana pendulum, at least? I mean, what with the first lot going out for commercial sale, and all. They've really got it looking lovely, engraving and everything. You're just about a full partner in Granger-Weasley Industries anyhow, not to mention key investor deserving of some dividends..."

"Nah. Honestly, I like the original a bit better. ...Don't tell Hermione, though," Harry said slyly as he broke apart his chopsticks, and rubbed them together to get rid of any splinters. "She'll fuss like mad that I prefer the one she cobbled together from some spare parts she found in the garden center's DIY section."

Ginny laughed a little, pulling open the chow mein. "And probably be a little flattered. Makes sense to me, though. I'd trust what Hermione cast and crafted herself over the automation. It'd be a bad start to the day to have a touch of arsenic because somebody on the production line got distracted…" She paused to take a sip of her cider, not catching Harry's chopsticks quickly darting in to steal a prawn off the top of her chow mein. "Heeyyy… Just for that, I'm eating the third spring roll."

" 's fair," Harry said around a mouthful of food before pausing to sip a bit of his own cider. "When you see Hermione and Ron tomorrow, at lunch -"

"Uh, I think you mean at  _the Granger-Weasley Industries investor board meeting luncheon_ ," Ginny corrected with playful false-snottiness.

"Yeah, yeah - ask what brand incinerator they're using these days? ...Since they had problems with theirs, earlier."

It was a statement that unintentionally swept lightheartedness out of the room. Problems was, of course, the politest of euphemisms. They both know why Hermione and Ron had invested in an incinerator and now quietly burned all of their household waste. Perhaps it would be more satisfying if the reason was some evil conspiracy, like Harry seemed to be on the verge of facing. But it was banal at best. Too many hack journalists ready to comb through every trace. Too many Wizarding tabloids with too few morals, and too much time on their hands.

It was a bad day when they both got the news from the Daily Prophet of Hermione's miscarriage. It was even worse when Hermione, sobbing, and Ron, looking quietly shell-shocked, admitted that it was not their first, but the fourth.

Because there was no time for certain things when on the run from Voldemort. Because even a devastatingly intelligent young witch still couldn't account for every intricacy of gynecological magic. Because some magic left scars for life, and not on the surface. Because they were just children, desperate, bolting from place to place, then marching on the front lines, and would never be the same for it.

A near-decade was nothing compared to a lifetime.

It was something they all tried not to think of too often.

"Well," Ginny said finally, voice slightly hoarse. "We've still got these Muggle movies to catch up on, right? I mean, Hermione's insisted, and she'll ask me tomorrow." She bounced up from the sofa to pull up two slightly battle-worn and scuffed VHS cases. "Here, first two from our pile, so that after dinner we can turn our brains off for a bit. D'you want, uh… The Little Mermaid, or One Hundred and One Dalmations?"

Harry frowned slightly around a bite of crispy duck wrapped in pancake. "The Little Mermaid, I know, but what's the other one?"

"Uh…" She pursed her lips slightly in thought. "Well, I'm going to make an educated guess: it looks like a shiteload of dogs happen."

This was enough to bring Harry out of the last of the anxious black mood, and almost enough to get him to snort crispy duck up his nose. "Okay, we're definitely going for that one, then, and I'm not saying that just because you've been trying to sweet-talk me into getting a guard dog and I've got a feeling that this movie is going to help with that…"

* * *

A good half-hour and several boxes of takeout later, Harry stood outside in the evening air. The pre-movie lull was just enough time to walk around and check the protective charms still held. Not enough time to roll more cigarettes, though - every puff of the one he was working on tasted slightly of back-of-the-drawer woodsiness, where he always kept a few spares. It'd be something to keep his hands busy during the movie.

In the meantime, there was the darkening sunset, and the wards needing to be checked.

Hector Lyonsdowne was, by all historical accounts, an absolute fool. A weak-willed Advisor to the Minister of Magic who encouraged an attitude of appeasement to Grindlewald and Hitler both, his name was all but forgotten, except to be scathingly mentioned in the same breath as Neville Chamberlain's  _peace within our time_. But all his cowardice went hand-in-hand with paranoia. Harry had to admit that Lyonsdowne Place had to have cost a pretty galleon in its day, and from the governmental coffers no less, but at least it still stood for him to enjoy it.

The stout and blocky house, in what would have been elegant Art Deco style if it had been allowed to flourish just a little more, was nearly an eyesore. It certainly didn't fit in with all of the other houses, but thankfully its substantial grounds made this less obvious. The trees didn't exactly flatter it, either. But that wasn't why Harry had purchased it - or, rather, expressed interest, and then furiously made the Ministry take payment for it instead of just giving it to him.

No, the squat mansion had been built with all manner of protective wards built into it, from the very foundation upwards. Apparently it had even taken a direct hit sometime during the Blitz, and the only evidence that the Luftwaffe had gifted a bomb to the mansion were some slightly singed trees.

_That_  was the type of security Harry found appealing.

The sunset was helpfully painting the patch of woods gold for him still. August was nearly finished, and the nights were starting to get colder. Maybe, Harry supposed, that was why he was part of why he was so anxious. Last days of August about to become the first days of September. Start of another Hogwarts school year.

Maybe that's why he was so poised to suspect that something awful was bearing down on him, ready to unfurl itself over the next few months.

He thoughtfully ran a hand over the bark of an old oak, tracing the half-hidden patterns of the ward behind it, still holding firm and strong. Behind him, back in the house, on the other side of the open garden door, he could hear Ginny cheerfully say goodnight to family members on the magically-enchanted phone. In a few minutes, they would both meet up again on the sofa, and spend the rest of the evening trying to forget so much of this. Little touches like a story to pay attention to, or Ginny's new soap - with the vanilla and musk, when she was close enough to lean into him and he could smell it on her skin - or the way her oversized shirt hung off her to show one freckled shoulder, and how she grinned when he noticed -

They could get by on those for awhile.

But, Harry thought as he set his jaw, if something bad was about to try it, he'd be properly prepared.

* * *

The next morning, Harry gratefully accepted the cup of lukewarm coffee in its styrofoam cup as soon as it was offered. It was definitely better than nausea, but waking up that early to catch a train through the Chunnel also had its drawbacks. After a long sip of the coffee - tepid, but strong enough that Harry suspected it would eat through spoons, and thus had to be served black - he felt his brain finally unstick to properly speak.

"Not that I'm ungrateful, Officer Marcel, but I'm used to both the Gendarmes  _and_  the Bureau de la Justice Magique playing a hell of a lot more tug-of-war over any case that ends up on this side of the channel."

The French officer rolled his shoulders in an affable shrug. "Honestly, Detective? You're doing me a favor," he said perhaps too cheerfully for someone holding a case file on a murder. "I know what this sort of thing is from a distance. There's a charming English term for it…"

"Wild goose chase?" Harry took another deep gulp of coffee.

"Exactly!" He punctuated this with a wave of the file-folder. "You can afford the resources to waste on it. Me? I've got a ratio to maintain of resolved versus unresolved, and everyone running metrics about it breathing down my neck. So an Englishman, wanting to take the biggest problem on my desk? A godsend. I'll let  _you_  get nowhere with it, instead of me." He paused self-consciously a moment. "No offense."

Harry waved it by with a hand. "None taken." Sure, the chatter was banal, but the Muggle forensics were in, and more data was always good. Also, the coffee was brutally strong. And gloriously non-instant. Maybe a little challenged in the temperature department, but he could forgive a lot. Now all he needed was… "Do you mind, by the way, if I smoke? The new guidelines in the trains are going to kill me, honestly…"

Marcel raised an eyebrow even as he grinned. "Asking a French country gendarme if he minds being around smoking?"

"...Yeah, not my finest deduction," Harry admitted as the other man continued grinning even while holding out his wand, a lick of flame ready to light Harry's cigarette. "Thanks, it's much appreciated. ...So, an obvious murder, and you still think this is a dead-end case?"

"Of course. The most you'll find here?" He opened the folder, taking a glance at its contents. "Maybe, with a terrible amount of work? Mmm… A dealer who sold her a faulty foe-glass, panicked when he realized she was a Muggle. Or if you're lucky, he sold her something much more dangerous, and he got sloppy enough to leave the foe-glass. Maybe - if you're very persistent - you'll find him, and if you're downright blessed with even more luck? He'll confess. But…"

"But?"

"Most likely? Find him, can't pull together anything more than some fines for selling magical wares inappropriately." Marcel closed the paper folder definitively, grinning he offered it out. "Bet you twenty euro on it."

"Twenty euro? A bit pricey." Harry eyed the folder, unable to help himself from smiling as well, a mirror grin tugging at one side of his mouth.

"Well. Or equivalent for a good steak dinner."

"It all rides on steak-frites, eh?" Harry took up the folder. "Sounds like a fair bet to me. I've got a talent for getting in far too much trouble for my own good, anyway. Thanks, Officer. I owe you one. ...Mostly for the coffee. But I'll see you soon, I'm sure, to collect my steak dinner from  _you_."

"Spoken very confidently!" Marcel kicked back in his chair, even as Harry polished off his cup of coffee and set to head out. After all, there was a new address in the top of the notes - one just itching for him to get to.

"Like I said, it's a talent. It can't just sit there being a cold case when trouble is so good at finding  _me,_  right? ...À bientôt, Officer."

"Salut, Detective! ...And good luck - I'm sure you'll need it!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Wow," you may be saying, "that was an awful lot of words for nothing much!", and to that I would like to say: PACING! ...Probably? I don't know, maybe kinda? Listen this is a story that real bad wants to be a screenplay or at best a TV series, and in absence of having full BBC funding and a production team, I do my best. Kinda. Sorta? I don't know anymore. Words, words, WORDS

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes: So, I'm trying to get back in the saddle by returning to my roots a bit. This fanfiction has been brewing for... quite awhile, honestly, but finally popped out because I got so very frustrated with Cursed Child, ha! This emphatically does not mean I'm abandoning my other stories - I would very much love to get back to Masquerade, but I'm wanting to only write my best. This is... not my best? Not my best. But, hopefully, still good enough. Anyway, chronic pain is rough. Go give your local disabled a hug. Et cetera, et cetera. Also yes I did end up drawing the cover for it but yes I am aware it's very mediocre and I can't draw an older short-haired Harry Potter without him turning into Hawkeye from the Avengers for some reason? Listen let's just gloss over it at this point
> 
> Also I'd say take a drink every time the author tries to do research and ends up clearly American anyway but you'll die of liver failure so don't do that.


End file.
